


i hope i never lose the bruises you left behind

by awhitershadeofpale



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, I'm so sorry for that, Love Confessions, M/M, Missing Scene, POV Castiel (Supernatural), POV Dean Winchester, Pining, Purgatory, Self-Sacrifice, but uh...repression!, i originally planned on this ending happy but that's just not realistic, poor benny along for the ride, second chapter we get some Dean POV so, this is largely focused on cas in purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-11-01 14:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20816660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awhitershadeofpale/pseuds/awhitershadeofpale
Summary: With Dean carving his way through purgatory in search of Cas, Cas continues on his self assigned mission to protect Dean at all costs. And when Dean prays to Cas, Cas finds himself praying back.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> if you're not big into longing from the Cas side of Destiel, this might not be the one for you. 
> 
> big thanks to caroline for being the most alpha beta reader around.

‘Not for nothing Cas…but the last time someone looked at me like that…I got laid.’ the words bounced around in Castiel’s head as he lifts his face from the river. In moments of weakness he allows himself this brief respite from the horrors purgatory has surrounded him in. Swimming in sin, he figures, is as good an excuse as any to indulge in his baser instincts. His reverie was interrupted by the image of Dean when he said those words, broken and ready to give himself up to Michael. Guilt filled him. Taking joy in the memory of Dean’s words when he was broken nearly beyond repair hit him in the stomach, in theory those words were everything Cas wanted Dean to say, to feel, about him. But instead they serve as a reminder of Cas’s failure to keep Dean from harm during the apocalypse. He snapped his mind back to the mission he would die before failing: keep moving, keep Dean safe. 

While Cas indulged in the occasional memory while resting, one of the only things that could truly distract him from his mission was the recurrence of Dean himself inside his mind. The headache started, dull at first, but he knew it would grow sharper as the thoughts became more definite. Dean was praying to him. Again. 

Stuck in purgatory made receiving Dean’s prayers a deeply painful experience for the angel. His existence being so antithetical to the very fabric of purgatory, it was blindingly painful when the human inserted himself into the space between Cas’s ears. He could ignore it, sure. It would be easier than flipping a switch, one thought and Cas could eschew his ability to receive prayer and finally be at peace, or as at peace as one could be on the run in purgatory.

But he can’t. He won’t.

Sometimes he feels it would be better to just allow the monsters to take him, keeping Dean safe with a distraction of that magnitude. That train of thought always seems to be interrupted by Dean’s voice, the sound of which reminds him that the longer he can push on, the safer Dean will be.

Dean’s prayers often begged Cas to come back to him. Begged him to stay safe. Cas had never heard anything close to begging cross Dean Winchester’s lips so the onslaught of desperation he received through Dean’s prayers began as a shock. Slowly, but surely, this desperation only added more fuel to Cas’s fire. Keep moving, keep Dean safe. Keep Dean safe. He frowned slightly to himself thinking of what Dean would say if he knew Cas was sacrificing himself to protect him. Dean could never know that his prayers for Cas’s return and safety only inspired the angel to continue on his current track. 

The begging, as out of character as it felt, were the easier prayers to handle. Those at least had hope. A Dean that believed in  _ something.  _ But the other kind, the kind that woke him from what fitful sleep he was able to piece together, were the kind he couldn’t bear. A broken Dean Winchester praying for him to still be alive, praying to him in the way that one prays to lost loved ones in times of crisis. Praying in a way that conveys just how close Dean is to giving up the hope of ever seeing Cas again. 

These prayers rip Cas from his sleep more often than not. The base instincts that purgatory brings out in him push him standing, ready to move toward Dean, to alleviate the pain his half-baked plan had caused. But the longer he’s conscious and the longer he walks, he remembers what this was all for. A safe and sad Dean is better than a dead one in any universe, the idea that Dean’s light could cease to shine is one that Castiel will give his life to prevent. The idea of a Dean killed by his lack of self restraint, his selfishness, his  _ inadequacies  _ couldn’t become a reality. Dean’s continued existence was Cas’s sole purpose and a world without Dean would lose Castiel too.

  
  


The one thing that Cas will never admit, even to himself, is how often he returns the favor. He doesn’t know exactly when he started, if there was a conscious decision or not, but after one of Dean’s nightly report style prayers, he found himself praying back. 

At first it was to respond to Dean’s questions, to fill him in on the purgatory news. More than prayers, they were what he’d heard Dean call a ‘captain’s log’ once upon a time, just addressed to Dean in specific. It wasn’t weird, he assured himself, it was normal and a good outlet to stay sane in a hopeless place.

The captain’s logs were never the problem. They were a logical way to organize his thoughts and served some purpose. But once Castiel began speaking to Dean, he found the connection so intoxicating that he found himself praying to Dean on a stunningly frequent basis. Praying to Dean became his confessional, became his sanity. Logically, he knew Dean couldn’t hear him and, logically, he knew the talking to himself that his prayers really were might be a sign that he was losing his mind, but when Dean’s voice slashed its way into his mind, logic flew out the window. 

Possibly, maybe, if he was good enough and strong enough, he and Dean would make it out of this place one day. If he kept moving he had to believe that  _ Dean _ would make it out of this place and Dean’s earthly life was salvation enough.

Cas was snapped to his reality by Dean’s prayers cleaving his head in two, sitting down quickly against a tree on the bank of the creek, water rushing over his still submerged feet. How deranged had he become that these headaches brought a ghost of a smile to his face?

_ “Cas? Can you hear me?” _

The ghost of a smile on Cas’s lips split into a full grin, no longer caring how deranged he might seem. Surely, purgatory had seen worse.

_ “I guess I’m not sure why I always start these stupid prayers with asking your stupid ass if you can hear me. Not like you’re gonna answer me either way.” _

Cas’s smile dropped. “Yes Dean, I can hear you. And I’m answering you as best I can,” he thought.

_ “Ah the sweet sound of your radio silence Cas, I’ve nearly forgotten what your annoying voice sounds like” _

“I wish you could hear me Dean. I wish you could know that I’m always listening” Cas was no longer sure if his prayers remained in his head or if his thoughts were falling through his lips and frankly he didn’t care who or what heard him talking to a Dean that wasn’t there. The pain of this prayer caused his vision to blur.

_ “Anyway, here’s what’s going down…” _

Cas closed his eyes, lulled into a brief peace by the sound of Dean’s voice, as unpleasant as his stories were, the idea that Dean spoke to him every night, like clockwork, warmed his chest. The longer time passed in purgatory the more human Cas felt. The emotions he now had the capacity to experience, and the sleep he often found himself slipping into, were the least of his concerns. Along with the bittersweet realization that his emotions were more human than angel these days and the bliss sleep occasionally brought, came human reflexes, human senses, human mortality. Cas experimentally bent and straightened his fingers while distractedly listening to Dean’s update, lost in the sound of his voice. The ring finger of his right hand twinged when he moved it, jammed at the knuckle. On earth or heaven or any place but here, such an idea is unthinkable, an angel with a jammed finger. Cas took perverse pleasure in his new found humanity. Somehow, someway it made him closer to the humans he’d given his millennia of existence to serving.  _ Makes him closer to Dean,  _ his traitorous mind provided.

_ “All that to say Cas, we found the back door, me and Benny we got it. I’m coming for you so hold tight. I will find you and pull us both out of here if its the last thing I do”  _

Cas’s eyes snapped open.  _ No no no,  _ Cas thought. Dean found the backdoor and he  _ needed _ to get out, he needed to put himself first for once. That stupid self sacrificing son of a bitch was going to get himself killed in Cas’s name and that would certainly spell the end for them both. 

_ “Anyway you winged asshole, I’m coming for you so hold tight and stay safe until then. Fuck Cas,”  _ Dean’s voice suddenly broke,  _ “if you’re not…If I can’t. God...stay safe I need you with me man, I can’t go home without you, empty-handed, screwing up again man I just can’t do it. I’ll see you soon I promise.” _

And like that the pain and Dean’s voice were gone. The post prayer clarity was a feeling Cas found himself rapidly addicted to. It was that clarity, he reasoned, that he loved about Dean’s prayers. The clarity.

With this clarity, Cas is on his feet moving again. If Dean was looking for him, it was only a matter of time until he caught up. “ _ Damn him.” _ Cas thought, and then chuckled to himself, as if the Righteous Man could ever be damned, at least more damned than his imprisonment in purgatory made him. 

The Righteous Man, a concept Cas had hidden behind for so long. You are drawn to him because he’s righteous, you are drawn to him because he is a creation of your father, you are drawn to him because he is  _ good. _ Cas stopped his line of thinking there. Dean was good, better than any human or angel he’d ever known. If being trapped in purgatory wasn’t the place to be honest about his sins, where else was? He felt for Dean, more than he knew how, more than should have been possible when he was on earth with his grace intact, and purgatory brought those feelings to the front of his mind.

Night fell rapidly in purgatory, artificial, not dictated by the sun but by whatever ancient powers held this place together. Cas built a small fire, using the driest wood he could find to avoid sending up too much smoke. Dean had mentioned once that green wood built a fire to get you caught and trust Cas to remember every word that had graced Dean’s lips.

Settling in for a few hours of sleep, Cas allowed himself to retreat into a favorite memory, the night they trapped Raphel, the night Dean tried to pay for company for him, the night things shifted. The shift was what made this memory a favorite. The shift and the image of Dean’s head thrown back in laughter, the lines around his eyes, his laugh. His  _ real  _ laugh sounded like the music he always faintly heard in the garden in heaven, which he’d never paid much mind to until that night. No, that night, that laugh, that moment is when he knew, come hell or high water, Dean would always come first. In his mind he is back there again.

“It's been a long time since I've laughed that hard…It’s been more than a long time.” Dean choked out around his laughter.

Cas smiled despite himself. With the amount of time he’d come to spend among humans he understood a lot better why the girl had been so disturbed by what he had said but still, Dean’s reaction had been priceless. His mind wandered away from him, as it’s oft to do, especially with this memory. He studied Dean’s face, frozen in mirth, smile wide, eyes crinkled and filled with joy. Joy and something else…dare Cas go down this road again? Analyzing Dean’s reaction for something, anything that would reveal his true feelings about the moment, the relief that Cas wasn’t going to copulate with that woman, the joy that knowing he was still Dean’s and Dean’s alone. The imagination, he reasoned, came with the human emotions. Because there was no way he wasn’t reading more into Dean’s feelings and micro expressions than there was to read, instead projecting the response he longed for. The memory twisted into a fantasy, something Castiel usually stopped before it could start but something about his predicament left him careless, _ “Who does it hurt besides me?”  _ he thought and let the fantasy take him wherever his subconscious wanted it to go. 

“I’m glad that my societal faux pas entertain you, Dean,” the fantasy version of himself grouses while fighting a smile, the urge to laugh along with Dean nearly overwhelming.

“It’s just…man. If it were me you did that to I would have kicked the shit out of you, not just screamed bloody murder,” Dean says, dragging a hand in a practiced nervous motion across the back of his neck. 

Fantasy Cas quirked his head “If I did what to you Dean? Kissed you like her? Touched you like her?”

Dean swallowed visibly, tension in the car growing, “I meant psychobabble about my father like that.”

Cas slumps in his seat, or as much as an angel of the Lord can slump, “Right well I have made my thoughts about John Winchester perfectly clear so my  _ ‘psychobabble’  _ shouldn’t be anywhere near as shocking to you. Plus my knowing yours father’s name wouldn’t come as a shock to you in the same way.” he reasons.

Dean chuckles despite himself, nervous ticks back in full force. “Well I did make you a promise Cas and you know I don’t break my promises.”

The tension in the Impala of Cas’s dream ratchets up a level or two as Cas turns to look at Dean softly “And what promise is that, Dean?”

Dean flushes redder than Cas has ever seen him, sans the disturbingly high number of times he’s seen the man soaked in blood, “I promised I wouldn’t let you die a virgin.”

Cas heard a branch crack behind him and he’s pulled out of his own head, kicking and screaming as he went. Unfortunately while he entertained himself, he had left himself vulnerable in purgatory. All for the fairytale that Dean could want him too. In quick and practiced motions, Cas extinguishes what remained of his small fire and picks up the knife he had fashioned out of a thin jagged rock. He’d been in a single location for too long and had put himself at great risk for just a few moments inside his head, his angelic willpower seemed to grow weaker the longer he spent in purgatory. The weakening of his defenses he reasoned, must have been related to purgatory. This was in an attempt to silence the nasty voice in the back of his head that tried to tell him the truth: the constant pushing against the boundaries of his own nature to escape into a world where Dean loved him back tore at the fabric of his grace, as antithetical to his nature as being in purgatory itself was. That voice, Cas thought, was welcome to shut its pie-hole.

The foliage to his left rustled again, closer this time. Holding his makeshift weapon like his angel blade, Cas readied himself for the inevitable attack. Spinning to his right just in time to slice straight through the throat of the leviathan sneaking up on him. The onslaught continued with barely a moment for Cas to consider just how outnumbered he was. A fantasy of Dean led to his undoing. He had no time to laugh though with the benefit of hindsight, the notion was quite funny. He was growing weary slashing at his attackers when he heard it.

“I GOT YOUR BACK”

Through the crowd what appeared to be a creature that was not a leviathan was hacking away moving towards him. Either this creature wanted to kill him for himself, or he was...helping? When the stranger arrived by his side he motioned for the two of them to stand back to back, covering one another’s blindside. 

When the leviathans attacking them had been dealt with, Cas turned to see what kind of creature had risked his well being for the angel’s. A rugaru, and one that had barely turned. Humanity still somewhere close to the surface instead of buried in a body count.

“Thank you for your assistance. I was vastly outnumbered.”

The rugaru snorted, “They’d been on my ass when they musta caught wind of you. I followed them to see what was going on and I saw you hacking em up and I figured they’d be less likely to try and eat me or whatever if they were dead so I took the opportunity. Don’t think for one minute I don’t want to kill you angel. You don’t belong here and neither does your boy. He’s killing his way through this place for you. What chaos you morons cause wherever you go...”

The rugaru walked away from a shocked Castiel, processing the idea that Dean is slicing his way through purgatory, putting himself in unnecessary risk just to drag Cas topside again. Feeling more human by the minute, Castiel was torn. How could he feel like there was something good, something tender in Dean’s sacrifice. After all he had put himself through to keep Dean safe, how could he find Dean’s willful disregard for his own safety...warming? 

_ “It doesn’t mean what you want it to mean, Cas. It means he’s loyal to a fault, it means he couldn’t live with the guilt of losing a soldier. He couldn’t have any feelings other than duty for you because of the plague you unleashed on the world he gave his life to protect over and over and over again.”  _ the cruel voice in his head reminded him, a phrase so often repeated it was easier for him to tune out.

_ “You don’t deserve his loyalty.” _

Finally, something on which they could agree.


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry the update took so long, personal stuff and a typhoon in japan are to blame, wish i was kidding.
> 
> there has been some editing to tags and rating bc i completely changed where i expected this to go.
> 
> hope y'all enjoy!

Dean stood over the body of the Rugaru that had seen Cas, wiping the blood off Ruby’s knife with a rag torn from the shirt of one of the countless monsters he’d ganked on the seemingly never ending quest to find Cas. Dean smiled despite himself at the thought of Ruby’s knife wreaking havoc in purgatory, that good-for-nothing bitch might have been good for one thing after all.

Dean felt better than he had in months, in the last year even. Cas was alive and he was alive as recently as three days ago when the Rugaru last saw him. A grin many could misinterpret as predatory split Dean’s face wide. If this was a hunt, Dean was closing in on his prey. 

A hunt is how Dean has to think about his mission. Track, kill, strategize, repeat. Purgatory had reduced him to his most base elements and there was a simplicity to his life in this in-between that he’d never known. Track, kill, strategize, repeat. 

Benny had become a useful ally in the quest for Cas, with only the minor promise that Dean would carry him out of purgatory himself. This promise seemed like a small price to pay for the road map out of purgatory and if Benny went full ripper when he was topside well, Dean had sacrificed far more for less.

Stowing his blade Dean gestured to Benny that they needed to move.  _ “Three days down the stream” _ the rugaru had said. 

They had better start walking.

-

“CAS!” Dean’s voice cut through his ablutions, rinsing his face in the stream and drinking deeply while he was at it. It was strange, he thought, that he could hear Dean’s voice without the usual headaches. Maybe he was close to burning his grace out and there was little left to resist against the fabric of purgatory. Maybe he’d lost his mind. Both were plausible.

But instead, Cas turned toward the voice and saw Dean himself. 

_ “Definitely crazy,” _ Cas thought. In his year in purgatory, he had never once hallucinated Dean while he was awake. 

As he ran down the mental checklist that suggested he had well and truly lost his mind in this land of horror, Dean grasped him tight and he realized that Dean was there, holding him, smiling, and relieved. He could feel the relief falling off Dean in waves and for Cas, seeing Dean again -- and relatively unharmed at that, triggered the same reaction. 

_ “Keep moving, keep Dean safe,”  _ the persistent voice in the back of his mind reminded him. The realization was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. He’d failed Dean, again. Dean had found him and put himself in grave danger to do so. It seemed that he could never do what was necessary to ensure Dean’s wellbeing, that he would fail him time and time again until one of his mistakes proved too costly. 

Dean is angry with him, he can tell. He wants Dean to understand. To leave. To save himself. But Dean is Dean and he’s resolute in his refusal to leave Cas behind.

And, really, it’s this that makes Dean who he is.

-

Benny, Cas was forced to admit, was useful in all the ways Dean had suggested. Not to insinuate that Cas didn’t implicitly trust Dean’s judgement because, honestly, he would (and had) trusted Dean with everything. But carrying a vampire out of purgatory under his own skin seemed like a bridge too far, even for Dean at his most desperate. 

Pushing that train of thought aside, Cas and Dean both nod when Benny offers to take the first watch of the night. Neither Dean nor Cas were that tired but the past several days journey had left them little time to talk and Cas could tell Dean had something on his mind that wasn’t for Benny’s ears. 

“It’s not your job to save me, Cas.” Dean starts when he has judged Benny to be out of earshot.

Cas couldn’t help the snort that escaped at the thought that Dean wasn’t his responsibility. 

“Don’t do that, Cas. Don’t dismiss me.” Dean said, frustration coloring his tone.

“Dean, it was foreordained that you would be my responsibility. That I was to guard you, protect you. To presume you know better than the word of God is ludicrous.” Cas replies, tilting his head back and pinching at the bridge of his nose.

“Oh,” is all Dean can muster up as a reply as he sits against the base of a tree on the stream bank. It makes sense, in some twisted way, that Cas is protecting him out of obligation to an absent father. He had, foolishly, entertained the idea that Cas did what he out of affection rather than obligation. 

Cas finally looks over at Dean, expecting more of a fight about Cas’s protection and sacrifice. Cas waits for a quick retort about constantly putting his own judgement above the word of God, to great effect, but for once, Dean choose to drop it. It is that uncharacteristic retreat that pulls Cas fully into the conversation. The moment between the two of them is silent. Cas stares at Dean in that uncomfortably intense way that only an angel of the Lord could folding his legs to join Dean on the forest floor, while Dean looks anywhere but at Cas.

_ “It was silly, really,”  _ Dean thought,  _ “that there was ever anything here. Besides familial obligation. I just never realized I wasn’t the family he was obliged to.” _ After all that heaven had done to Cas, he still chose to remain faithful to their edicts, or at least to those his father left before skipping out on his child support. 

As this thought crystallizes and hardens into an ugly black spot in Dean’s mind, Cas replays the short exchange and comes to realize what Dean must have pulled from his words.

_ “Maybe this will be easier,”  _ Cas thought,  _ “Maybe if he doesn’t know how I feel, I can convince him to leave without me, to save himself.” _ Once again, that ugly voice rears its head in Cas’s mind,  _ “Or maybe,”  _ it supplied,  _ “the realization that what you feel for him extends far beyond brotherhood would disgust him enough to get him to walk away. Put everything on the table Castiel, and he’ll certainly leave you, like your brothers and sisters before. Like your father. Like everything you love.” _

Castiel has yet to find a situation in which the warnings in his head have gone amiss, maybe if he could drive Dean away from him completely, he could make sure Dean made it back topside. Before he could talk himself out of the metaphorical self-destruct button he was about to press, he forged ahead.

“Dean,” Cas started and stopped, trying to navigate the best way to proceed, “I’m not sorry that I left you in here.”

Dean’s head snapped up and now that Castiel had his attention he figured the time was now or never.

“I have disappointed you and failed you in so many ways, Dean.” 

Dean attempted to cut in and shut down this line of thinking, but Cas was having none of it.

“I endangered the world you gave your life enumerable times to protect. You died for Earth, Dean and all I have ever done is put it back in peril. I fail you time and time again but this, I thought, was the one thing I could do right. If I kept the leviathans at bay, if I kept moving to give you the opportunity to escape, that still wouldn’t be enough to repent for my wrongs.” Cas rushed to get this first part out, the one that Dean would object to, the one Dean would try and find fault with to drag Cas with him damn the cost.

“Cas you have to know that’s not-”

Cas interrupted, “Dean, please let me finish what I have to say. It’s important that you know the truth and the extent to which I have betrayed your trust.”

Dean looked down at his hands, silently allowing Cas to continue. As Cas’s words washed over him, Dean’s mind began to race, tracing down the list of the ways he’d done wrong by Cas, trying to imagine what Cas could have done to require such penance. Dean knows, however, that there is nothing Cas could do or say that would allow him to distance himself from the angel. Cas had him wrapped around his finger, hopelessly devoted and whatever ounce of himself Castiel was willing to spare was enough for Dean to cling onto. 

For him, Cas was permanent. He was as inevitable as the Impala’s terrible gas mileage or the twinge in his stomach when someone asks why his father didn’t return their voicemails or why his line was disconnected after all these years. He’d realized, far too late, exactly what that amounted to: he loved Cas. 

At first he was certain it was brotherly, the type of love which he could process. He would die for Cas, he would die for Sam, too. After all they had been through together, he reasoned that it was only logical that he would kill and die for Cas, that he would consider him family. It wasn’t until much later that Dean parsed the knot in his stomach as much more than brotherly love. 

Maybe it wasn’t fair to call his love for Cas  _ more _ , per say. Anyone that knew the Winchesters knew that the brothers would go to the ends of the earth, slice their way through heaven, and torture through hell for each other. But this kind of all consuming love was bred into them, forged in the fire of their Lawrence home, in the backseat of the impala, on backroads crisscrossing the United States, whereas this love is one that Dean chose. For some reason, one he only allows himself to explore late at night and half a bottle of whiskey in, Dean couldn’t shake the angel. It wasn’t the whole dude thing that unsettled him, he’d come to terms with that part of himself a long time ago when he caught himself brushing off a beautiful woman in a dive bar in South Carolina to keep his eyes on the bartender’s extremely male ass. Since that realization, Dean has tried a little of anything that comes his way. But loving someone was different and Dean was still wasn’t sure how to do it without breaking himself into pieces in the process.

“Cas, with everything we’ve been through together, I doubt there is anything you could say right now that would keep me from dragging you back topside with my own two hands so get that through your thick fucking head.” Dean grouched.

Cas laughed mirthlessly, pinching at the bridge of his nose again. “Since I pulled you from hell, you have done nothing but welcome me, set me straight, and open my eyes to the world around me, to the beauty of my father’s creations. But I’ve been um, well,” Cas equivocates, catching Dean off guard. 

Cas isn’t one to stutter or qualify, he says what he means and acts on it with the kind of single-minded fervor that only a millennia of existence could provide.

“I’ve been selfish, Dean. I’ve taken and taken and taken. And for what exactly?” Cas was on a roll now, berating himself, “to hurt you. To hurt your brother? Your family?”

“You’re my family too, Cas.”

This brings Cas to halt.

“I have spent so long trying to understand what I’ve done and why I’ve done it and why every time I’ve failed you seems to cut deeper than the last.” Cas draws a deep breath in, preparing himself to confess the secret he’s kept so close for so many years. The words on the tip of his tongue threatening to spill over, he knows, are likely to change Dean’s perspective of him forever. He’s taken endlessly from Dean and the Winchesters and the way he repays him is saddling Dean with the burden of Cas’s inability to differentiate between Dean’s obligation to him coded into his DNA and the affection he so desperately wants it to be. “And still again, I’m choosing to hurt you for my own selfish reasons but if I don’t say it now, I’m sure I never will. I love you.”

Silence fell between the two men. Cas looked at Dean in that unflinching way Dean had fallen in love with in the first place, prepared for Dean to lash out. Instead, Dean continued to stare at his hands like they contained the secrets of the universe while Cas watched intently for any sign that Dean had heard him at all.

“Shit Cas.” is all Dean can seem to muster.

The pit in Castiel’s stomach opens up, one of those human reactions that had become far more common after the absorbing souls disaster. Cas never thought that getting what he wanted could hurt so deeply.

It’s at this point Benny returned from his watch shift to find the two of them locked in silence, Dean’s mouth open, about to retort.

“I’ll take the next watch.” Cas said, springing to his feet. 

Dean doesn’t look up as he walks away.

“I’m feeling like I just walked in on something I ought not of, brother.” Benny notes, looking between a seated Dean and a hastily retreating Castiel.

Dean stood silently, clapping Benny on the shoulder as he walked past, eyes following Cas’s retreating figure in the distance.

“Give me a minute man.” 

Dean trekked through the dull almost dawn of purgatory’s night. It never fully darkened, night and day more of an abstract concept than a cycle between sun and moon. His mind was racing. In all the ways he’d pictured this, often a whole bottle of whiskey down, sometimes laying next to whoever he had picked up at the bar, it was never like this: filthy, rushed, and apologetic. The semi-lucid dream he found himself revisiting often was a simple one because, hey, Dean was a simple guy. They were in a motel in the middle of nowhere, cleaner than the usual digs, Sammy was out on the liquor run they’d agreed they’d earned since there was no hope of starting out on the road until morning. Dean pictured Cas, smiling that soft smile that sometimes split his face when watching TV. He’d call whatever he was watching illogical, Dean would reply by calling him Spock, Cas would tilt his head as Dean chuckled at his own joke,  _ “I know, I know you don’t get the reference.”  _ With Sam gone, Dean would have the rare luxury of time to study Cas’s profile and somewhere along the way Cas would turn and ask Dean some trivial question about the show he’s settled on and Dean always imagined he’d answer effortlessly, sliding  _ “man you and TV was one of the first things that made me love you.” _ Quick, simple, easy and Cas would turn and return his feelings. 

In Dean’s wildest dreams, the ones where Cas actually did love him back, it never looked like this.

Dean caught up to Cas grabbing him by the shoulder, “Okay wait wait wait you can’t just drop shit that affects everything about us and just walk the fuck away. You’ve done quite enough walking away from me, don’t you think?” 

Dean couldn’t figure out where his anger was coming from but it poured out in a stream and he didn’t seem to be able to stop it. As the words fell out of his mouth, Dean found himself more and more invested in his anger. This emotion was far easier to work through than the terrifying concept of love. Trust Dean Winchester to react with anger to getting the one thing he always thought truly out of his reach.

Cas shrank against the tree behind him.  _ “This is what you wanted Castiel, you wanted him to hate you. You heard him, this changes everything and he’s  _ _ furious _ _ . Push him away, make him leave, make sure he makes it back to Earth.” _

Cas stood straighter at the reminder,  _ this was about keeping Dean safe _ and how it made  _ Cas _ feel wasn’t even important enough to be considered part of the issue. Cas’s attention returned to Dean pacing in front of him, hands pulling his hair into all sorts of wild angles.

“AND THEN! YOU LEAVE ME! WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO THINK CAS? ALL I’VE EVER DONE IS FAIL YOU AND THE SECOND YOU GET THE CHANCE YOU RUN OUT ON ME. HOW CAN YOU LOVE ME IF YOU CAN’T EVEN STAND TO BE AROUND ME IN THE WORST PLACE WE’VE EVER BEEN. AFTER IT ALL YOU COULDN’T WAIT TO BE RID OF ME AND YOU  _ LOVE _ ME? BULLSHIT.”

Dean was worked up into it now and Cas saw very little end in sight. It was better, he believed, to allow Dean to yell and storm and brood about his failures, to realize just how much better off he was without some broken wannabe God following him around like a stray dog looking for table scraps of affection.

Dean stopped to take a breath and Cas cut in, unable to help himself. To ask silence of himself was maybe too much, to accept Dean’s ire and to allow it to wash over him without retort went against his fabric in the same way that allowing Dean to cease to exist did.

“I’m sorry Dean. For betraying your trust and for allowing myself to pretend that your duty to me was anything but. Dean, I’m sorry for taking advantage of you and your compassion. I’m sorry for loving you.”

Dean stilled.

“You’re  _ sorry? _ Sorry?”

All at once, Dean was advancing on Cas, forearm across his chest, pushing him more harshly against the tree at his back. Cas’s stomach sank, he’d expected Dean to react poorly, but violence was never something he anticipated. Castiel braced himself for the punch he was certain Dean was about to land and while shocking, Cas couldn’t begrudge him this reaction.

And then, Dean was kissing him.

Suddenly Dean was everywhere, hands on his waist, in his hair, around his throat. Dean was kissing him like they were on the sinking Titanic and if that wasn’t the perfect metaphor for their lives he didn’t know what was.

“You could kiss me back anytime you know?” Dean said, breaking himself away from Cas for just a moment.

“After everything I’ve done, all the wrongs I’ve-” Cas began but was cut off by another press of Dean’s lips.

“In case you didn’t get the message, I love you too. I’m damaged goods though, Cas. You can’t return me to the store when you figure out all the massive and tiny ways I’m broken.” Dean replied, barely retreating, Castiel able to trace the movement it took to form each word with his own lips.

“Dean, you have always been, and will always be, the Righteous Man. When I pulled you from hell I expected to have to rebuild you atom by atom but your soul was strong and good. You were whole after an ordeal that should have shattered you on a cosmic level. But you’re here, kissing me. There’s nothing on you to fix.”

The two kissed a moment or a millenia longer, who could really tell at this point. The two of them seemed content to kiss and explore one another, portal from purgatory be damned until a less than delicate throat clearing broke the two of them apart.

“It’s light enough to move.” Benny said, looking anywhere but at Cas and Dean. Dean looked down at himself, flushed with his leg pushed between Cas’s and found himself grateful for Benny’s tact.

“Yep, right, yep got it.” Dean rushed out.

“Let’s plan on leaving in 5.” Benny said as he turned on his heel and marched away.

Cas looked at Dean with reverence, lifting one hand to cup the side of Dean’s face, “After all I’ve done wrong, the idea that you can even bear the sight of me is too much to comprehend.”

The corners of Dean’s lips turned upward into the first genuine smile he’d felt in a year, “I know a little something about bad decisions Cas, and there is nothing, and I mean nothing you can’t come back from.”

With a delicate kiss on Cas’s forehead, Dean turned to follow Benny, “Come on man! We’re getting out of here today! I can feel it!”

  
  



End file.
